


What It Is Between Us

by Rainne



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, smex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:54:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Buffy Is A Hero Damnit ficathon.  Prompt by <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://misswitch.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://misswitch.livejournal.com/"></a><b>misswitch</b>, to include humor, quotes from the Buffy movie, Buffy being right about something and sticking to her guns despite everyone disagreeing with her instincts, happy ending.</p>
<p>Chris... I know you asked for no angst... but unfortunately you drew me as an author.  :\  I DID try to make it as teeny as possible, though.  Does that count?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What It Is Between Us

Buffy was distracted. Everyone knew it, except perhaps Buffy herself, and everyone was worried about it. The Scoobies were discussing it among themselves at Giles’s apartment one afternoon, while Buffy and her mother were in L.A. shopping for clothes for the upcoming fall semester. Buffy’s father had unexpectedly sent what Buffy was referring to facetiously as a “guilt check,” and the two of them had decided to squander every penny, possibly on Rodeo Drive.

“She stares out into space a lot,” Willow commented, sipping at the cup of tea from the teapot on Giles’s warming coil. “Like, way more than usual.”

“She seems distracted on patrols as well,” Giles commented.

Xander nodded in agreement. “You can sit and talk to her, and she makes all the right noises, but it’s like she’s not really there.”

“Has anyone any notion what might be causing this behavior?” Giles asked, at a loss.

There was silence for a moment, and then Willow gasped. “Oh! Oh, no!”

The two men looked at her curiously. “Spill, Will,” Xander demanded.

The redhead’s eyes had gone quite large and quite round. “She’s acting like she did with Angel, at the beginning. All sort of distract-y and elsewhere-y.”

“You think Buffy has a new suitor?” Giles asked, he face neutral. “Surely she would have shared the information with us.”

Xander had no problem showing his emotions. “Oh, no!” he snapped in disgust. “Not again!”

Willow swallowed hard. “I’ll see what I can find out,” she promised. “Buffy’s coming over after patrol tonight for a girls’ night. We’re supposed to do our nails and watch chick flicks and stuff. Maybe she’ll tell me something.”

“Well,” Giles said, standing up, “if that’s all it is… perhaps you can simply remind her that she can’t afford to be distracted right now. The demon population is still quiet since the defeat of Adam and the Initiative debacle, but we can’t depend on things remaining status quo. They’ll bounce back, sooner rather than later, and if she’s distracted, she can’t be effective in the field.”

He vanished into the bathroom, leaving unsaid the very obvious connection that if Buffy were ineffective in the field, Buffy would very shortly be dead. Xander and Willow shared a significant glance, washed their teacups, and let themselves out.

Late that evening, Buffy let herself into Willow’s room through the glass patio door. Willow wasn’t there, so Buffy ducked into the bathroom for a quick shower to wash off the vamp dust, then dressed in her pajamas and tied her damp hair back in a ponytail. When she came out again, Willow was there, inserting a DVD into the player. “How was patrol?”

“Patrolly,” Buffy replied breezily. “Couple vamps, one Polgara demon. Nothing major. I should call Giles, though.” She sprawled across the bed, picking up the phone and dialing the familiar number. When Giles answered, sounding particularly muzzy, Buffy apologized. “Sorry for waking you.”

“Not at all, Buffy,” Giles replied. “Anything to report?”

“Nothing major,” she replied. “I was just telling Willow. Two vamps in Restfield Cemetery and a Polgara demon outside the Humane Society.”

“What was it doing?” Giles asked curiously.

“Trying to get at the big dogs in the outside kennels,” Buffy replied, against a background of Willow’s horrified squeals. “It didn’t get any of them. The barking is what made me go see what was going on. There was a Rottweiler out there that was about to come unglued.”

“Are you injured at all?” Giles asked. Buffy smiled. He always worried so much about her.

“Just a couple bruises,” she replied honestly. “Nothing that won’t be gone by this time tomorrow.”

“Very well, then,” Giles replied. “I assume you’re at Willow’s? She mentioned you were having a hens’ night.”

Buffy blinked. “A what?” she asked, giggling.

Giles laughed as well. “A ladies’ evening in,” he explained, “wherein said ladies partake of unhealthy sweets and snacks, watch unsuitable things on the telly, giggle uncontrollably about their various male attachés, and perhaps consume a bit more alcohol than is strictly necessary for young ladies of good breeding.”

Buffy blinked at the telephone. “Are you outside with binoculars or something?” she asked, her eyes flicking from the bag of chocolate on the night table to the porno DVDs on top of the television and then to the bottle of Smirnoff on the desk that Willow was struggling to open.

Giles laughed again. “No,” he replied, “I simply know young ladies. I have been extensively trained in the habits of young females, you know.”

Buffy laughed as well. “Well, it sounds like your training paid off,” she replied. “We’ll drink one to you.”

“See that you do,” he replied in a mock-censorious tone. “Good night, Buffy.”

“Night, Giles,” she replied, hanging up. She hopped off the bed and went over, taking the bottle from Willow and twisting off the cap easily. Within minutes, they were sprawled across Willow’s bed together, drinking cosmopolitans out of juice glasses and staring wide-eyed at the bondage on the screen.

“Oy vey,” Willow muttered as strange things began to happen on the television. “People actually do this? For fun?”

“Oh, yeah,” Buffy replied. “I saw a book about it at Barnes & Noble once.”

Willow’s wide eyes went to Buffy’s. “Really?”

Buffy nodded. “Full color pictures and everything. I was like 15 at the time; it was right before we moved here. Flipped me out.”

Willow sat up, suddenly curious. “Had you ever, y’know, done anything before then?”

Buffy nodded, sitting up as well. “Yeah. I was dating this guy, Jeremy, that was on the varsity football team. He was a junior the year I was a freshman. I made the cheerleading squad, and I started dating him, and…” her voice trailed off, and she shrugged. “He had a car, and my parents didn’t pay a lot of attention to where I was, who I was with or what I was doing.”

“Wow,” Willow said softly. “I mean… I guess we all assumed Angel was…”

“My first?” Buffy finished for her. “Yeah. He did, too. I never told him he wasn’t.”

“Wow,” Willow said again. She sipped at her drink for a minute. “Oz was mine,” she said unnecessarily, wanting to make Buffy feel that her confidence was reciprocated. “Of course, you probably knew that. I wasn’t much of a guy magnet when we first met.”

Buffy smiled slightly. “Actually, that’s not true. You had a couple of admirers.”

Willow raised one eyebrow. “Yeah, right.”

“No, really,” Buffy insisted. “You remember Derek Brown? He was a year behind us?”

Willow’s brow furrowed as she thought about it. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Tall, blond hair, brown eyes, wore a lot of punk band T-shirts?”

Buffy nodded. “That’s the one. He stopped me in the hall one time, just out of the blue, and asked me if you’d gotten over Xander yet, because he wanted to ask you out.”

“No way!” Willow stared at Buffy. “What did you say?”

Buffy laughed. “I told him no, but he should ask anyway, because maybe he could distract your attention. And I think he would have, but you got with Oz a few weeks after that.”

“Oh, wow!” Willow breathed softly, reveling in this new information. Then she suddenly remembered her stated mission from earlier, and her face turned sly. “Hey, speaking of that, what about you?” she asked. “I mean, now that Riley’s gone, who’s on the Buffy radar?”

Buffy gave a low, throaty laugh that Willow had never heard from her before. It wasn’t the laugh of a girl sharing crushes with her best friend; it was an adult, sensual laugh: the laugh of a woman who knows her worth. “Oh, there’s someone,” she said, a secret smile gracing her face. “He wants me. But he doesn’t know that I know.”

“Really?” Willow asked eagerly. “Who?”

“Not telling,” Buffy replied.

“Oh, come on,” Willow begged, “you can tell me!”

“No, I can’t,” Buffy replied reasonably. “You can’t keep a secret, and I don’t want Giles or Xander knowing about this.”

Willow blinked. “Why not?”

“Because Xander would flip out; even with Anya, you know how he gets when I show interest in any guy who isn’t him. And Giles… I’m just not ready to tell Giles yet.”

Willow chewed her lip. “You know, Buffy,” she said gently, trying her best to be diplomatic, “Giles didn’t really react well when you sprang Riley on him.”

Buffy’s eyes went flinty. “Well, I didn’t really react well when he sprang Olivia on me, so I guess we’re even,” she said flatly. She stood and went to the table, mixing herself another drink. “I’ll tell Giles when I’m ready to tell Giles, and not before. And you can’t keep a secret for five minutes without giving away that you know something, and as soon as anyone knows you know something, they can get it out of you within ten questions. So I’m not telling you.”

And Buffy would say no more on the subject.

A few days later, Buffy and her mother went out of town again, this time on a weekend buying trip to Houston. Buffy seldom went with her mother on such trips, but Joyce had specifically requested Buffy’s company this time, so she had gone, in the interests of family unity. The Scoobies gathered once again at Giles’s apartment, and Willow told them what little she knew about Buffy’s mystery man.

True to form, Xander reacted badly. Giles and Willow stared at him while he raged about Buffy’s romantic history, until Giles finally interrupted him with a quiet “Are you quite finished?”

Xander paused in his raging to stare at Giles, whose face had gone quite cold. “Uh… yeah? I guess?”

“Good,” Giles replied. “I suggest that you consider getting over this childish infatuation that you have with Buffy. You would do better to keep your own house in order and focus on the woman you have, rather than the one you can’t have. Otherwise you’ll find yourself with no woman at all. And if you continue to speak of Buffy the way you have just now, you’ll find yourself soon with no friends, or at least, none in this house.”

The words fell like stones from Giles’s lips into the pool of silence that filled the room, and Xander swallowed at the veiled threat in the words and the icy expression on Giles’s face. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to get so worked up.”

“Apology accepted,” Giles replied, his voice still flat. Then he stood. “I think this little meeting is over.”

Out in the courtyard, Xander turned to Willow. “I never saw Giles like that before,” he said softly.

Willow shook her head. “It’s hard on him.”

“What is?”

“Buffy finding someone new,” Willow explained gently.

“Why?” Xander asked. “I mean, I don’t get it. Buffy’s always got boyfriends. Owen, Scott, Riley, even Deadboy. Why’s this any different?”

Willow looked at Xander with pity in her eyes. “Because before, he hadn’t admitted to himself that he’s in love with her.” Shaking her head, she turned and walked away, leaving Xander in the middle of the courtyard, gaping after her with a distinctly fish-like expression on his face.

The last week of break passed, and school started again. Now officially college sophomores, Willow and Buffy both rushed a sorority and were accepted, adding a little extra busy to their lives. The demon population was slowly beginning to rise again, meaning that Buffy could no longer slack off on patrols. By October, she was patrolling nightly, often asking Giles to accompany her. By Halloween, he was accompanying her every night by unspoken agreement. All the while, Buffy began to carry a self-satisfied air more often, until it was practically an aura surrounding her.

“I just can’t understand it,” Willow told Giles and Xander one afternoon. “I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was seeing this guy every day or something, I mean like really seeing; but she’s not, because if she isn’t in class or on patrol, she’s studying or doing stuff with the Zeta Alpha girls or her mom.”

It was true that Buffy was constantly on the go, but it was also true that she had never seemed happier in all the time Giles had known her. His heart ached, but seeing her so happy was worth the pain, so he said nothing. Then, at Thanksgiving, came a bombshell.

“I think my American History professor is a demon.”

This calm declaration, delivered as it was across the turkey and stuffing, caught everyone off guard. Giles was the first to recover. “What makes you think that?” he asked, calmly serving himself another helping of Joyce’s very delicious sweet potato casserole.

“I just do,” Buffy said. He makes my spidey-sense tingle.”

Willow rolled her eyes. “You just don’t like him because you flunked the last pop quiz.”

Buffy glared at Willow. “That’s not true!”

“Oh, Buffy,” Joyce said disapprovingly across the cranberries. “You didn’t.”

“I couldn’t help it!” Buffy replied defensively. “It was the day after I was out all night with Giles, when we had that problem with the Ringwraiths or Dementors or whatever those things were.”

“You know perfectly well they were Arbic’th demons,” Giles replied mildly. “Please pass the stuffing.”

“Anyway, he’s entirely heinous,” Buffy continued with an air of injury. “He handed me the paper with the F and said I had no sense of history. No sense of history? Not only am I the latest in a line of mystical beings that stretches back for thousands of years into the dawn of prehistory, but he wears a brown tie. Anyway, I still think he’s a demon.”

“Well, I shall be happy to check with my books later,” Giles replied, passing the stuffing down to Xander. “I’ll search for demons who wear brown ties, shall I?”

Buffy glared at him. “Excuse me? Have my instincts steered us wrong yet?”

“Shall I count the times?” the Watcher replied dryly, his eyes on his plate, “Or shall I just point out our recent fiasco with the Initiative – one which could have been avoided – and leave things at that?”

Silence descended on the small dining room as the words were said and even as they were spoken, Giles knew he’d crossed the line. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Buffy’s napkin was already in her plate and her footsteps ascending the stairs at a rapid pace, punctuated by the slamming of her bedroom door. He sighed. “Bugger.”

“Not at my supper table, thank you,” Joyce replied mildly. “Good luck,” she added as he stood and turned toward the stairs.

He climbed the stairs swiftly and tapped on her door. “May I come in?” he asked quietly, but received no answer. Deciding to take a chance, he opened the door slowly. When no scream of feminine affront stopped him, he stepped into the room, only to find the curtains billowing in the evening breeze. He walked over and stuck his head out the window, fully expecting to find nothing, and emitted a girlish shriek of surprise when Buffy turned to face him.

Her mouth quirked up in a slight smile. “Very manly.”

“Why, thank you,” Giles replied, relieved that she was at least willing to make fun of him. “May I join you?”

“As long as you promise not to fall off and break your neck,” she replied amicably, moving to the side to make room for him on the small roof overhang.

Giles climbed out through the window and joined his Slayer on the rooftop under the darkening sky. “I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments of silence. “I oughtn’t to have said that. It was rude of me.”

Buffy did not reply, her eyes fixed on the moon rising before them.

“It wasn’t your fault what happened last year,” Giles continued doggedly. “Well, not only yours, anyway. We all had a part in what happened; we all had a part in our… fragmentation, I suppose. Not just you. I think that perhaps we as a group have a tendency to blame you for things simply because you are the catalyst that brought us all together. It’s not right.” He caught her expression in the pale light, wry and a little sad, and added, “Listen to me, babbling on. I’m as bad as Willow. Well, I suppose I could keep talking until you strike me dead, or…”

Buffy laughed then. “I’m not gonna strike you dead,” she said softly. “It just… it hit kinda close to home. I mean, it’s not like you didn’t say anything I haven’t already thought.”

Giles sighed, reached over and took her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It was wrong of me to say such a thing.”

Buffy squeezed his hand gently. “It’s okay.” She looked up at the moon again, then back at Giles. “We’d better get back downstairs or all the pumpkin pie will be gone.”

“There’s that little of it?” he asked incredulously as they both stood.

“No,” she replied, “it’s just that Xander loves it so much.”

Laughing, he gave her a gallant hand through the window, even though she didn’t need it, and then allowed her to return the favor. They went back downstairs to find the table cleared of food and everyone having a slice of pie and glass of milk in the living room. There were plates and glasses on the coffee table for Buffy and Giles, who claimed them quickly before Xander, who was eyeing them over the rim of his nearly-empty plate, could swoop in on them.

A few days later, Buffy stopped by Giles’s house after classes and stuck her head in the door. “Is it safe?”

He looked up from the book on his desk and smiled. “Come in, Buffy. Would you like something to drink?”

“Got any juice?” She breezed past him. “Don’t get up; I’ll get it.”

“Of course,” he replied, stretching his back. “Actually, I don’t mind getting up; I’ve been sitting her for…” he paused, looking at the clock. “Several hours.”

“Find anything useful?” she asked from the kitchen. “Risings, anniversaries, feasts of evil saints?”

“No, but neither did I find anything about your professor,” Giles responded, looking chagrined.

Buffy frowned, putting her glass down on the counter. “You still don’t believe me.”

“Buffy, whether I believe you or not is immaterial,” he responded, standing and coming into the kitchen with her. “The list of demons who can pass for human is incredibly long, and forty percent of the demons on that list are perfectly harmless. Another thirty percent can’t even survive in this dimension. So the odds are that even if your professor is a demon, he’s a perfectly harmless one.”

“Yeah, but a harmless one wouldn’t make my Slayer sense go off, Giles!” Buffy pushed past Giles, her face a set mask of anger, and headed for the door. “Forget it! I’ll handle this myself.” She slammed the door behind her, and was out of sight by the time he made it out into the courtyard.

She didn’t show up at their usual patrol-meeting point that night, nor did she check in with him. He continued to follow the regular routine of showing up where they usually started patrol, but she did not come for several days, nor did he hear from her. Messages left on her dorm room phone went unanswered. Willow and Xander, after having expressed opinions to Buffy that perhaps Giles was right, reported a similar cutting-off of contact as well. If he had not been able to hear from Joyce that she spoke to Buffy every day and Buffy was fine, just furious, he would have been frantic with worry. He continued to keep up the routine, hoping that she would come to him.

Two weeks later, she finally did. When she arrived, around nine on a chilly Thursday night, she did not speak at all, simply held out her cell phone, the brightly lit screen shining in his eyes. “What is this?” she said flatly.

He looked at the picture on the tiny screen, then wiped his glasses and looked again, studying it carefully. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’ll need to consult my books.”

“Well, do it,” she snapped. “I need an answer fast, because he’s planning something.”

“Where did you find this demon, Buffy?” Giles asked. “And how do you know it has plans?”

“I know it has plans because I broke into its house this afternoon and snooped around, while it was out teaching my American History class.” Her voice was defiant, her jaw set, and her face tight. “It’s got all of its living room furniture pushed off to the side, and a big circle set up with candles and herbs and stuff. I think it’s just waiting for the right night to do whatever it’s going to do.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then sighed in defeat, closing the phone and slipping it into his pocket. “I’ll go home and get started right away,” he said softly. “Buffy… for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for doubting you.”

“Yeah, well, you should be,” she responded sharply. “I’ve got a patrol to run, and you have some research to do. Call me when you have answers.” With that, she turned away and vanished into the night.

He spent the next sixteen hours feverishly researching, looking for any and all clues that he could find about the demon which, in its natural form, was quite ugly, with muddy green flesh and several protrusions in its facial area. It actually had two mouths, several eyes, and no discernable nose or ears. The mouths ended up being the defining feature, and he at last found what he was looking for in MacTavish’s Historie of the Underworldlie Creations of Lucifer, a book published in the late seventeenth century by a Scottish demonologist.

MacTavish, who had been a freelancer working for the Church, the Council, and the French crown, had not known the name of the creature, but according to his writing, there was only one of it. It was impossible to kill; like the Hydra, if its head were cut off, it simply grew another in its place; but it could be banished from the mortal plane for a thousand years if a certain ceremony were performed over an artifact – any artifact – and that artifact then destroyed in a second ceremony. According to MacTavish, the Watcher and Slayer of the time performed the first ceremony, but failed to complete the second before the demon tore the Slayer’s head off.

MacTavish did not, unfortunately, include details of the ceremony in his writings. He did, however, include the name of the Watcher, and Giles immediately repaired to his collection of Watcher journals. There he found the ritual, and sank down onto the sofa with a cry of horror.

It took him about four hours to muster up the courage to call Buffy, but he finally did so, and got her answering machine. In a hoarse voice, he advised the recorder that he had found the answers she was looking for, and she should come by his flat at her convenience. Then he hung up and sat down on the couch again, staring at the journal on his coffee table as though it had been made of nitroglycerin.

She arrived about forty-five minutes later, her demeanor still cold toward him. That she felt betrayed by his lack of trust was obvious to him – had been since the day she slammed his door on the way out. He wanted to apologize, to make things right, but he didn’t know how, and the news he had to share with her wasn’t going to help matters at all. She shut the door behind her and stood in front of it. “What do you have for me?” she asked quietly.

Giles offered her MacTavish’s book, showing her the entry about the unnamed demon masquerading as a professor. She read it over, then looked up at him, her expression grim. “All right,” she said. “What’s the ritual?”

He sighed. “You might want to sit down for this one.”

She stared at him for a moment, and the façade of angry indifference cracked slightly, allowing a wry expression to peek through. “That bad?”

“Worse,” he replied, unable to help the slight quirk at the side of his mouth.

“Are we sacrificing goats or babies?”

“Baby goats,” Giles quipped, and was inordinately pleased when her laughter rang out unforced. Emboldened by his success in making her laugh, he put MacTavish’s book aside on his desk and stepped forward, taking her hands. “Buffy,” he said softly, “I cannot apologize enough for my lack of faith in you. You were exactly right in everything you said. When you properly listen to your instincts, they never steer you wrong, and I ought to have known that, because I trained them. I was wrong, and I am sorry. Can you forgive me?”

Buffy studied his face for a long moment, then suddenly tiptoed and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Silly Giles. Of course I can. As soon as you learn to accept the fact that I am always right, then we won’t have these problems any more.”

Her smile warmed his heart, and he squeezed her shoulder gently. “As soon as you start being always right, I shall be happy to make that admission.”

“Deal,” she responded cheerfully. “Now, show me this ritual.”

“You aren’t going to like it,” he warned her.

She shrugged. “So I don’t like it. It’s not like I’ve liked very much about this stupid Calling yet, is it? So I do yet another thing that I don’t like, and it’s over, and the demon is banished. End of story.”

“Not, as you often say, so much,” Giles contradicted her gently. “But read this before I say anything further.” He handed her the relevant journal, open to the page that began the first ritual, then walked into the kitchen, ostensibly to put the kettle on, but actually to hopefully forestall any violent reaction on Buffy’s part.

The little apartment was entirely silent except for the sound of him bustling in the kitchen, until the scream of the kettle told him that enough time had passed for Buffy to have read the few pages at least seven times, and she had neither said nor done anything. With shaking hands, he set up the tea tray, including a plate of her favorite chocolate biscuits, and carried it into the living room. She was sitting on the sofa where he had left her, the book closed in her lap, staring out the window – or possibly at it.

He made her cup the way she liked it and set it before her. She took it automatically and sipped from it, clearly deep in thought, for a few moments. At last, she looked up at him and spoke. “I see why you said I wouldn’t like it,” she commented neutrally.

He said nothing, only fixed his own cup of tea and sat down in the chair on the other side of the table, watching her.

“We’re going to need to do this soon,” Buffy said, her voice carefully neutral. “I assume you have all the supplies?”

He nodded, said nothing. He waited.

“Do we need to wait until tonight?”

He shook his head. Waited.

She looked down at the book again, then leaned forward and placed it very precisely in the center of the coffee table. “Say something,” she softly begged.

“What exactly do you want me to say?”

“Anything.” She stood up, began to pace. “Anything. I don’t know. Argue with me. Tell me we can’t do this. Try to convince me we have to do this. Anything at all. Just… don’t just sit there staring at me.” Her arms were wrapped around herself, as though she were chilled.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, softly. “I wish there were another way. I know perfectly well that this is the last thing you would ever want.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Buffy replied, a bit sharply.

He winced. Knowing it was one thing; hearing her say it was something entirely different, and cut deep despite the knowing. “I’m sorry,” he said again. He searched for the right words. “I… I know that you are… seeing someone; I don’t know who it is, but Willow told me that there was someone. I don’t know if you’ve told him about all this or not. I assure you that this will change nothing between us; I shan’t expect anything of you, or…” he trailed off in the face of her expression, which was growing more incredulous as each word came out.

“Willow told you what?”

He took his glasses off and polished them thoroughly. “She told me – told us, actually, Xander and I – that you were interested in someone, and that he was also interested in you. This was before your classes started; back in August. I had assumed that by now the two of you would have reached an understanding, so I simply wanted to assure you that this would be, er, for lack of a better term, strictly a business arrangement; that I would never dream of attempting to create any situation that might be considered binding, or interfering with –”

He stopped when he realized that she had covered her face with her hands, and that what was visible of her face had gone pale. She was shaking slightly, and he wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. “Buffy?”

She looked up at him, and he saw that there were in fact tears on her cheeks. Her expression was frozen in a mask of grief. “All right, Giles,” she said softly, swallowing hard. “Just business, right? We might as well get started.”

He might have been oblivious to some things, and completely unconnected to whatever she was feeling about others, but it would have been obvious to a dead man that something in what he’d just said had hurt her terribly. Only he didn’t know what it was, so he didn’t know how to fix it. “No.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“No,” he repeated. “Not until you tell me what is wrong.”

“Nothing, Giles,” she said softly. She looked down at her feet, and her hair fell around her face. “Just me being stupid, again. Being wrong about everything. As usual.”

He stepped toward her, brushing back her hair so that he could see her. “I thought we established earlier that you are always right.”

“Well, we were wrong. See? Wrong again. Always-wrong Buffy. I keep forgetting that part.”

He cupped her cheek with his hand, nudging her to look up at him. “Please, Buffy,” he asked gently. “What is it?”

She shook her head, eyes filling with tears again, and wouldn’t say. Then he noticed that his hand was still on her cheek. He almost snatched it away, but in that split second before he moved, his brain processed the fact that she was leaning into his touch.

“Buffy,” he whispered, hardly daring to hope, “Willow said that there was someone you cared for, and who cared for you… but she indicated that he might not yet be aware that you returned his feelings. Is… that still the case?”

Her eyes locked with his, and he felt her swallow hard. “I…” She paused, then studied him. “I’m… not sure.”

“Willow assumed,” he continued, stepping just the tiniest bit closer to her, “that the gentleman in question was a young fellow, perhaps someone you’d met in your college course. Is it possible that our resident genius could have been mistaken?”

He watched the light of hope dawn in her damp eyes. “Maybe,” she offered hesitantly. Her mouth bowed slightly, as though she wanted to smile but was afraid to.

“Could this, perhaps,” he suggested in a whisky-smooth tone she’d never heard before, “be an older gentleman to whom you refer? Perhaps a dashing, foreign type with a ragingly sexy accent?”

It worked. She burst out laughing and whacked him on the arm. “You jerk! You’ve known it was you for the last five minutes.”

He reached out, laughing as well, and pulled her to him, clasping her tightly. “I had to be sure,” he murmured into her ear. “You’re terribly hard to read sometimes, do you know that?”

“Hello, pot? This is the kettle calling.” She snuggled willingly into his arms. “God, this feels so good.”

He rested his chin on her head. “Likewise. I almost lost hope when Willow said you’d found someone, until I realized how she qualified it.”

“How’s that?” she asked his shirt button.

He laughed slightly, stroking her hair. “She said she couldn’t figure out where you found the time to meet this fellow, since you spend all your time in classes, studying, patrolling or doing sorority activities. And it suddenly occurred to me that you’ve been early to every patrol and every training session since about midsummer.”

Buffy laughed as well. “Dead giveaway, huh?”

“Quite.” He took her shoulders and stepped away from her, looking down into her face, and then leaned toward her slowly, giving her time to back away if she wanted.

She didn’t want; she met him halfway for their first kiss, and the moment their lips touched, he understood why all the novels said that truly falling in love was like coming home. He wanted to drown in her, to fall into her and never come out again. He wanted to hold her in his arms forever. Finally, though, they had to breathe, and they broke apart unwillingly, both panting slightly. Buffy’s pupils were dilated, and Giles was feeling a bit lightheaded. He rested his forehead against hers.

“Under ordinary circumstances,” he said softly, “I would on no account rush this. I would take you out on dates and spoil you; I would buy you gifts for your birthday and Christmas; I would woo you and treat you like a goddess. However…” he trailed off regretfully.

She smiled. “You still can,” she said softly, reaching up to caress his face. “Just, y’know, after we do this ritual.”

“All right,” he said softly. “Let me get my supplies together.”

She tiptoed and kissed him gently on the lips. “I’ll be upstairs.”

On the surface of things, the ritual was quite simple. He would have to pull the bed out from the wall, to make room for the circle of herbs that he would have to lay down, and he would have to decide which of his charged artifacts he least liked – actually, that was the easiest part; it would have to be that glass globe his cousin had sent him from Borneo with a mummified human hand inside. Disgusting thing. He unearthed it from the sea trunk in the second bedroom, where he stored everything, and carried it upstairs with the sack of prepared herbs and the book.

He nearly dropped the globe at the top of the stairs. She was lying on the bed waiting for him, gloriously nude. She had turned down the coverlet and was lying on his crisp white sheets, her bronzed limbs contrasting with the white cotton, her hair cascading over his pillow. She smiled at his appearance, then ever so slowly raised one foot sensuously, affording him a tantalizing glimpse of the round curve of her buttock and the plump lower folds of her most secret spot.

He forced himself to avert his glance before he ruined any chance of them doing this ritual tonight. Self-discipline now would be rewarded momentarily, he knew. So he carried the globe over and set it on the night table, laid the open book on the side of the bed, dropped the sack of herbs on her stomach with a grin, and went to the end of the bed to tug it out from the wall. He only needed to move it about a foot, and then he retrieved the herbs and laid out the circle, leaving an opening for himself to pass through it.

Stepping outside the circle, he shed his clothing, only slightly discomfited by her steady gaze. Sweater first, then shirt, he bared his chest, dropping the articles on the chair nearby. He toed off his shoes, kicking them under the chair, then took his socks off one by one and dropped them on top of the shirts. His belt came next, coiled and laid on top of the socks. Then, with her eyes still locked to him, he unfastened his jeans and slid them down his legs, stepping out of them and tossing them onto the chair also.

She licked her lips, and the tent in his boxers grew more pronounced. He removed them as well, and stood before her, proudly naked, displaying all of himself to her. He was in damn good shape for a man in his late forties, he knew, and he was proud of himself. He may not be a sculpted young god like Riley or even a sculpted marble statue like Angel, but he hadn’t any spare flesh on him, his chest and stomach still retained some definition despite the graying hairs there, and he knew that his endowment was as impressive now as it had always been. He was unashamed.

She held out a hand to him, and he went to her, pausing only to retrieve the globe and close the circle once he was inside. He knelt on the side of the bed, his body straining toward her, and held out the globe. “Place your hand on it,” he said softly. She did so, and he began to read the ritual words from the book.

She didn’t know what the words meant; they were in a language she’d never heard before. But the book had told her what they would do. She and her Watcher would generate energy, for which the artifact would function as a receptacle. Then when they had filled the receptacle until it overflowed, they would perform a second ritual that would take the stored energy and use it to send their targeted demon off to its own home dimension, from which it would not be able to leave for a thousand years.

He finished speaking, placed the globe and the book carefully on the floor by the bed, and reached for her. She arched into his touch, eagerly responsive, and he filled his hands with her, burying them in her hair while he kissed her, then rolling over so that she straddled his chest, and drawing his hands down from her shoulders over her breasts, across her flat stomach and down her thighs. Once he reached her knees, he moved back upward, gripping her buttocks firmly and urging her up into a kneeling position.

She opened above him like a flower and he filled his eyes with the sight of her, from her firm thighs to her stomach to her breasts to her beautiful face, tight with anticipation. Her hair cascaded down her back and flowed over her shoulders, and he thought in that moment that if he could not have her, he would die. He nudged her knees wider apart on the sheets, so that he could fit his shoulders between them, and positioned himself where he would do the most good, then pulled her down to him.

The taste of her was like the greatest sin of heaven, and he groaned into her body as her flavor filled his mouth. She echoed the sound, far above him, her head thrown back and her eyes tightly shut, her hands creeping downward to find his hair and stroke it as he owned her with his lips and his tongue. In moments he was learning every texture of her, every fold and crease and crevasse that made up her unique topography, and he was searching, searching for the places that made her moan, that made her whimper, that made her scream.

Scream she did, at last, and convulse above him with a warm rush of wetness that he reveled in. Then she was losing her balance, and he helped her to lie down, suspending himself above her to take possession of her mouth once more. She tasted herself in his kiss, and while she might once have shied away from such a revelation of her own innermost core, in his touch she found herself. The sweet late autumn sunlight covered them as he covered her, her arms and legs wrapping around him as he came to her and slid himself home.

“You know that I will take care of you,” he whispered hoarsely into her ear, buried so deep inside her that they seemed for the moment to be one flesh. “No matter what happens.” He tried to keep still, but he couldn’t help it; he moved ever so slightly inside her, and she made a tiny sound.

“I know,” she whispered back, her fingers combing restlessly through his hair again. “Please, please.”

But this was important. He had to make her understand. He raised himself on his hands, looked into her eyes, and made her look back, until he was certain that she was hearing him through the haze of physical pleasure. “I can’t, do you understand?” he asked insistently. “The spell requires no barriers.”

Suddenly she realized what he was saying, what, in the passion of his touch, she had completely forgotten. “Oh,” she said, looking down their bodies to the place where they were joined, and then “Oh!” with true understanding. Her eyes widened staring into his, and he kissed her forehead gently between her eyebrows.

“I will take care of you,” he repeated forcefully, “no matter what.” And she knew what he meant. The ritual required no barriers between them. There was a very real chance – especially considering what week it was – that she might become pregnant from this. And if she did, he would take care of her.

She nodded, understanding that he needed her consent to go on with this, understanding and accepting the risks, knowing that there was really no choice. “I know,” she said, pulling him close to her again. “I trust you.” And she moved beneath him, against him. He groaned, closed his eyes, and rested his forehead against hers as his hips began to move, pressing him deeper and deeper inside of her. There were no more words then, only the language of touch, of gasps and broken pleas as he filled her over and over to overflowing. And then the dam broke, and they were both crying out, feeling the energy of the spell prolonging their pleasure to a point of almost-pain, until Buffy thought that it was unbearable and it had to end or she might die of it, and then it was suddenly, blindingly over and he was lying on top of her, panting in her arms.

They were exhausted, but only for a moment – the feedback from the now-glowing artifact filled them both with a sudden rush of energy, and moments later, he was lying on his back beneath her, his hands cupping her breasts as her powerful thighs lifted her rhythmically on top of him, rising and falling in a graceful counterpoint to the thrusts of his hips, until his hands strayed downward, brushing over her soft hairs and finding the place where touch would affect her best. Suddenly she was arching in his hands and he was arching underneath her, and their cries filled the room again. The artifact glowed brighter, and it filled them yet again with the strange energy of light.

For hours it seemed they moved together, never separating, simply shifting and flowing to the rhythms of their bodies. It was almost as though they weren’t even there for long stretches of time. She might come back to herself on her hands and knees, crying out as he pressed into her from behind; he might open his eyes to find her lying across his legs, worshiping him with her mouth. The sun went down; the room became dark except for the light of the artifact on the floor, which glowed ever brighter with each physical peak that they reached and surpassed. And still they did not stop, as with each climax, the spell renewed them to begin once more.

And then suddenly it was done. They knew the moment their receptacle was full. The energy feedback that had sustained them for, according to the clock, over seven hours, was cut off midstream, leaving them sated but not exhausted – in fact, they felt oddly well-rested, as though after a long, solid night’s sleep. They lay together, studying one another for a moment, until Buffy finally spoke. “Well, that was… wow.”

Giles laughed. “I hope you don’t expect it to be like this every time,” he warned her, only partly teasing.

“God, I hope not!” she exclaimed, laughing as well. “I’m not going to be able to walk for days!”

“We must finish the ritual,” Giles warned her. “The demon will know what we are doing; the sooner we finish it, the sooner we will be safe.”

“Let’s finish it now,” Buffy said decisively, “before it finds us.”

They climbed out of bed. Giles lay the book on the bed, open to the correct page, and the two of them lifted the globe together. In unison they began to read the words written on the page that would use the energy contained in the globe to open the portal that the demon would be forced to go through.

This was the most dangerous part. They both had to be holding the globe, because if they let go, the spell would fail and have to be begun again, from the beginning. And yet the demon would be able to track them by the spell’s energy. Once it located them, it would undoubtedly attack, and Buffy, hampered by the spell and the necessity of keeping both hands on the globe, would be unable to fight it. That was how the last Slayer had lost her head so very literally.

They spoke the words quickly but carefully and firmly, and Giles had just begun to believe that they would finish before the demon found them when it began to batter down the door.

They began speaking even more quickly, both of them desperate to finish before it entered the apartment. They had perhaps five lines left to read when the door crashed inward. The demon roared, but the Watcher and Slayer did not falter; they continued to speak the words of the spell. It located them by the sound of their voices and started up the stairs – and paused in shock at the landing when it saw Buffy. “Summers?” it asked, the thick, wormy voice high with surprise. “Aren’t you Summers, in my Tuesday/Thursday 101 class?”

Buffy nearly tripped over the next-to-last line of text, but she managed it, and the demon roared again when it realized that they would not be distracted. It came bounding up the stairs toward them – four words left – it reached for Buffy – two words left – its claws closed on her head, tensing to rip it off her shoulders as it had done so many times before – and the world exploded in a soundless flare of blinding, deafening light.

When they came back to themselves, they were lying across the bed as though they’d been thrown there. The only sign that the demon or the globe had ever been there was a smear of lampblack on the floor. And Buffy, except for a set of claw-marks on her shoulder, was unharmed, held tightly in Giles’s arms.

They made love again, for themselves this time, and when they were done, Giles pulled the covers over them and held her tight against him. “Do you know what it is,” he said softly into the shell of her ear, “what this is between us?”

“No,” she said sleepily. “I know I love you, but this… it’s so much more than just that. It’s bigger than that. It’s like it owns us.”

“Yes,” he agreed gently. “That’s exactly right.” He closed his eyes and began to drift.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said again, in the very slow speech of someone who is already asleep but doesn’t yet know it. “But I hope it never ends.”


End file.
